The first goal of teaching is to strengthen, deepen and
refine our intrinsic love of learning. All other goals
and all methods must stem from that idea. Any that do
not support that goal must at least be questioned and
adjusted, if not eliminated. Otherwise, we are not
teaching but training.

Most of you reading this never knew Alec Kirby, and given
how little we talked since our days at Muskingum College,
I can’t really claim that I knew him, I suppose.
Still, our paths crossed for a time, a rather critical age
for many and what was in so many ways a really bad time
for me. Alec made it better, and learning that he
died has made my world a little darker. Even if we
didn’t talk for long stretches, knowing he was out there
made me smile, and we need those people as much as we need
the ones we see every day.

In some ways, we were a Mutt and Jeff or Oscar and Felix
pairing. He was four years younger and fresh to
college from a fairly upscale suburban area in Michigan
and really hadn't experienced much outside of that
world. Although I was naive in a world class way of
my own, I had gone from my working class, West Virginia
world to spend one college year in a very upscale southern
atmosphere plus two years as a dropout selling vacuum
cleaners, working in concrete, building prefab houses,
repairing railroad tracks and several other varied
jobs...very much a working class guy with a management
education and an unmotivated idealist with no real focus.

Alec was a motivated, focused idealist and a serious
scholar from the very beginning, spending much of his
freshman year worried that a single bad test score would
ruin his career. From there, he went on to publish a
book about Harold Stassen that received very positive
reviews from people in the field, including people that
Alec highly respected. It was a good time for Dr.
Kirby, but that serious side wasn’t the whole Alec.
No, he didn’t have a Mr. Hyde, but Alec the Earnest was
also Alec the Imp.

He had a face that said, “You must believe me because I’m
clearly clean-cut, honest, and earnest.” Oh, there
was a glint in the eye and twitch of the mouth that
clearly revealed the imp to those who knew him, but the
unwary could be led well past absurdity, such as the
over-worked waitress at Western Pancake restaurant when
the gang made a late-night visit.

All the waitress really wanted to know was which orders
were separate and which together, and Alec launched into a
wild list of which people were together, mixing and
matching this person with that one way down the table,
this one over there. It was as outrageous as he
could make it, and the waitress quietly took it all
in. Of course, she had dealt with us enough to be
hard to ruffle, and we were certainly easier than the
bar-closing crowd that came in later.

He also had a talent that enabled him to pick up any book
and automatically open it to the raciest page. I
tested him carefully with various books from that rack at
Lawson’s. I don't think we ever tried it with a math
textbook, but I have faith that he would have found
something. When you attended a small college in a
small town long before the internet, you had to create
entertainment and distractions where you could.

Still, it took a good friend with that impish twist to
spend half an hour or more making up suggestive puns just
from the detergent/dishwashing aisle one night in Shegog's
IGA. Given other events of that evening, it could
have become one of my more painful memories, but instead
it’s all about Alec, bad puns, and cackles. More
than once, he made a dark time lighter.

I doubt that we agreed on anything political back
then, and we quite simply saw the world from very
different perspectives. I was the guy from West
Virginia, and Alec was surprised and delighted the first
time he saw cows right beside the road.
I’m sure there were times that he was impressed by how
obtuse I could be, and there were times when he frustrated
me by not recognizing that I was always right, but just
disagreeing didn't really matter with Alec.

You could get into an intense discussion without
anger. Anger was saved mostly until later when the
darker realities of politics and history rode alongside
his idealism. Of course, being older, I was right, and he
did start leaning my way eventually. He was smart
that way.

What comes after this life? I may have guesses, but
I don’t really know, so I can’t say we’ll be seeing each
other. In “Casablanca”, Bogey told Bergman, “We’ll
always have Paris.” Our relationship would have been
closer to Bogey and Claude Rains, and we didn’t have
Paris, but at least we’ll always have Shegog’s.

Until We Follow (In Memorium)

Impish but no immortal imp, he grows
no older this day, nor will tomorrow.
Only we, like the memories we grip
so tightly, age, fade, and follow.

A prank, a grin, a word, a dream,
one final surprise, emptiness, and ache,
these are the candles we light today.
These are the candles that burn,
flicker, and follow.

We grow older this day, and
will tomorrow, and we embrace
each trace of memory, holding
until we follow.